As kaitiaki of one of the world’s largest Pacific collections, we feel a great responsibility to ensure the Pacific objects in our care survive into the next century and beyond to live on to tell the stories of our Moana Pacific nations.

To this end, we have embarked on a three year project titled - Pacific Collection Access Project (PCAP) – to provide a better level of care, understanding and accessibility to over 5000 objects that are part of this incredible collection which totals over 30,000 pieces.

Each year, hundreds of objects pass through the hands of our team of conservators, technicians, photographers and knowledge holders who all help us to honour our role as kaitiaki to these intricate, fragile, elaborate, stunningly crafted and treasured taonga.

Each object holds a number of stories about its origin, use and craftsmanship. So by engaging cultural knowledge holders from Auckland’s Pacific communities, we’re working to discover the many stories that are carved or woven into each and every object.

So what happens behind the walls of Pacific Collection Access Project offices? And what roles do our knowledge holders and staff members play? Rather than spelling it out in a long-winded blog we thought it would be much more fun to grab a video camera and follow an object as it passes throughout the team. We hope you enjoy it.

We would like to thank our tireless, passionate and wonderfully committed intern, Loes Van Lier, who was the driving force behind this video!